Born of War Read online

  “It might work.”

  It was the big containers that posed the most danger. A fourteen-thousand-gallon railroad tank car full of chlorine gas could wipe out much of a city. A small tank of gas on the back of a delivery truck was less of a threat. Could they identify and stop every railroad tank car moving the chemical?

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Omar returned from his walk. Karen could see him from the chest up moving through the savannah grass just beyond the grove of acacia trees. He could be seen pacing around, waving his free hand, as if someone was disagreeing with everything he was saying.

  He walked back to her and the others.

  “Tarriq is dead.” She greeted him with the news. The body was just behind her, curled up in a fetal position. It was cold and lifeless.

  “May he see the face of Allah,” Omar gave the edict.

  The others were not as sure. They wore the face of fear. One had been complaining of headaches through the night. He would likely be the next victim. Their silent partner was moving through the group one at a time.

  “You seem to not care.” Stewart stared at Omar.

  “It is war. There will be losses.”

  “But what if the loss is your captives? What will your people on the telephone think?”

  She had struck a cord.

  “Godane doesn’t know what he is doing. We let the Kenyans slaughter us by falling into their traps.” Omar didn’t care who was listening. “We need more kidnappings and more hostages. We need money for more ammunition and weapons.”

  Karen pulled herself up into the bed of the truck. The rain had come in torrents and then stopped. The monsoon would attack and then retreat. It had caused puddles of water to form on the tarp and she would cup her hands together to try and capture some of the liquid. She would drink and then try to get more for Peter.

  She had given up on ever being dry.

  If they could build a fire, there was a chance they would start to dry out. But the men were afraid that the fire would attract the enemy. They would only build one when they thought the lions or baboons were close. She had not seen a baboon but could tell, even with her little understanding of Swahili, that the men were more frightened of the baboons than the lions. It seemed that the lions only came when desperate for food.

  “How are you doing?” Peter looked worse than before.

  “Okay. Just thinking of my mother’s cooking.”

  “It’s not good to think of that.”

  “You know I have a child?” Peter turned his head to her.

  “No.”

  “Yes, I have a son. He and his mother live in Nice.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Pierre. He’s a junior in high school.” Peter was opening up in a way she did not like. He was accepting approaching death.

  Acceptance is dangerous.

  “His mother told me that if I did not leave the MSF, she would leave me. I had dreams.”

  Karen didn’t say anything.

  “I had a dream of the child that I did not save. I had a dream of the children that I did not save because I stayed home.” Peter held his hands over his chest.

  “My mother died last year.” Karen meant to change the subject but didn’t realize what subject she was changing to until it was too late. The words just came out. “My father lives for his work. He has become helpless without her.”

  “And you left?”

  Peter struck a nerve.

  “I didn’t know how to help.” Karen rubbed her neck with her hand.

  “Why are you rubbing your neck?”

  “Just a crick from when I fell asleep.”

  She pulled the tarp back a moment and looked up into the dark clouds. The rain was softer now but still fell on her face.

  “I think I heard something.”

  There was the faint sound of a jet, well above the clouds.

  “Another jet,” Peter mumbled.

  “Do you think they are even looking for us?” she asked.

  “We are worth money to these men. Always remember that. And yes, someone is looking for us. I feel it in my bones.”

  Tarriq’s men continued to stare at Omar. They were without a leader and knew enough English to realize that criticism of Godane was not wise. Their faces showed that they were uncertain of this Amriiki.

  “We will go on and meet up with our brothers. Godane and Faud are sending a battalion of men to meet us and bring us to Jilib.” Omar waved the cell phone. It gave him power over them as it was a real form of communication. It made them believe he had orders and a plan.

  “Jilib has the bananas.” Omar wanted them to think of food. It would give them direction. Omar had taken charge.

  Xasan and his father looked like this was a journey they had not planned for.

  “Jilib?”

  “Yes, have you ever been to Jilib?”

  “No.” Xasan had never traveled to the coast.

  “There is plenty of food to eat in Jilib and there will be money.” Omar needed them to all move together to Jilib so he could reach the other fighters.

  “Tell us. What is the reward?” Xasan wanted to know.

  “You will not get a new tire, my friend. You will get a new truck.” Omar sold the idea. “You will get a bag of Amriiki money.”

  “A new truck?” Xasan sounded doubtful. There were no new trucks in Ferfer or Beledweyne.

  “You will get paid in Amriiki money and can go to Kenya to buy a new truck.”

  The U.S. dollar had international appeal.

  “How much?”

  “More than you can dream.”

  Their group now consisted of Omar, the three followers of Tarriq, Xasan and his father, and the two prisoners.

  “We need food and water. And our brothers are less than a day away.”

  Karen and Peter knew that once they were with the larger mujaahidiin force there would be no escape. But they had no energy to do anything but breathe, and that was hard enough.

  “Less than a day.” Omar waved the telephone in the air.

  The rain came, however, and bought the trackers more time.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  “Amazing.” The Marine major looked at the display showing the location of the tablet with Captain Tola. It had moved far from the Shebelle River and deep into the interior of Somalia.

  “What does that scale indicate?” Moncrief looked over his shoulder as they talked.

  “They have gone nearly a hundred miles.”

  “Damn.” Moncrief knew that the captain would move fast but he didn’t know how fast.

  “And in this weather.” The major was amazed.

  The wind had started to blow the flaps of the tents. Rain came in waves and then would stop for a while.

  “The team that went to the departure point is on its way back right now.” The major pointed to another set of red triangles. They, too, had tablets that kept track of their locations. Their red triangles seemed to be nearly on top of the base’s location.

  “What is the weather forecast?”

  “This is the beginning of a good-sized monsoon. It is going to get much worse over the next twenty-four hours.” The major held up a fax showing a map that was covered with lines forming a circle to the west of Ferfer. The lines near the center of the circle were closer together. It was a wall of weather moving in.

  “What will this do to the Ospreys?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can they reach our men?” Moncrief looked into the major’s eyes to detect what the true answer would be. He didn’t like the idea of leaving his man out in the dark without help. If it meant putting on a pack and heading out now, by himself, Moncrief would do what he knew Parker would do for him if their positions were reversed.

  The major smiled.

  “You said you wanted to go?”

  “Yes, sir, without a doubt.”

  “Then you are going to find out the hard way.”

  Moncrief thought he had gotten the a
nswer.

  “This is combat. They go, period.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  They were getting close and knew it.

  Tola and Parker stopped one more time under two large acacia trees. They squatted down between the trunks of the trees to get out of the wind.

  “We need to make sure we are downwind when we get close.” Parker held up his hand to feel the wind direction. It was coming from the northwest and Ferfer.

  The flight time for the Ospreys will not be long. He wasn’t sure if the aircraft could make it through the turbulence that was building above them in the clouds. The aircraft would, however, have what pilots called a “push.” It meant that the aircraft would have a tailwind that shoved them across the surface of the earth. If the MV-22s had a speed of three hundred knots, it would be relative to what their ground speed would be. With a push, the aircraft could be doing four hundred or more knots on the ground. The climb up would be brutal and the descent would be like riding in a washing machine on full tilt. And they would have to turn into the wind for the transition because the nose of the tilt-rotor needed the resistance of going against the wave. But they would move fast.

  “We could be alone on this.” Parker kept his hand in the air as he felt the gusts come and go. It was the increase and decrease of the wind that troubled him the most.

  “Sir, I understand that you received the Navy Cross.”

  Parker didn’t think of those times. It was not something that one typically talked about. There was, however, one exception. Two men in the middle of Somalia with no one else who was friendly for nearly a hundred miles could discuss anything.

  “It was a long time ago.” He didn’t say more.

  “You didn’t like that guy from the Agency?” Tola was hitting all of the hot buttons as he wiped off his wet face with his hand.

  “I have learned to not trust the CIA.” Parker dropped that subject as well. It took him years to learn that his parents had been lost to terrorism because the CIA didn’t act on a suspicious suitcase that had been loaded on Pan Am Flight 103. The file was sealed after the crash at Lockerbie and had been locked away forever in some secret vault at Langley. The Agency thought they were tracking a suitcase of heroin for New York that would be exchanged for money to support the terrorist activities sponsored by Libya. In fact, the Samsonite didn’t have heroin in it, and the bomb tracking at the time was in its infant stage.

  “What about you? You say you are from Washington?”

  “Yes, actually we call it Lincolnville. It is more Alexandria, Virginia, than Washington.”

  “And you ran track there.”

  “Yes, and cross-country.”

  “Do you like doro wot?” Parker asked.

  “Yes, you know of doro wot?” Tola wiped his face again with his hand. It was a chicken-and-hard-boiled-egg dish with Ethiopian farmer’s cheese. “Don’t talk to me of doro wot now.” He laughed quietly.

  The wind started to subside for a moment.

  “We will be close very soon.” Despite the rain, the thorn bushes had been broken down from the truck. In one place he could tell the truck had gotten stuck. It looked like a wild-game watering hole with the deep ruts in the center and hundreds of footprints to the sides. A small piece of rag had fallen out of the truck bed leaving its calling card on the edge of a newly made mudhole.

  “Yes, it is time to start moving to the east so that we remain downwind.” Tola had a good sense of the track. The wind and rain would help as long as they kept the elements hitting their faces.

  Parker pulled back the slide on his Kalashnikov to see the bright gold of the round that was partially in the chamber of the weapon. He slowly let the slide move back into place without making any metallic noise. It was the metallic noise that he feared the most. Metal on metal would give away a position more quickly than any other sound. It was not a sound made for nature.

  “Let me send them an update.” Tola covered the tablet with its plastic holder. He tapped on the keys several times sending an encoded message to the F-35 on station above, which was instantly relayed to the operations center.

  Parker listened for sounds during the break in the wind. He thought he heard the hum of something large.

  “We have a new friend.” Tola showed the message to Parker. It said that the mission warranted extra support. A C-130 gunship was parked overhead as well.

  “Why a gunship?” Parker knew that the extra power was a blessing. Its automatically fed artillery guns could rain down fire on any enemy position and rake the ground with hot, burning shrapnel.

  “This is why.”

  Tola showed the tablet to Parker. The F-35’s cameras were able to look through the overcast and see what appeared to be ants all moving in the same direction. They were coming from the east. A battalion or more were heading towards their location on the ground. It looked like a convoy of trucks. The image was so clear he could tell the different sizes and shapes of the trucks.

  “So we do know that they are close. Very close.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Faud’s truck was running as fast as it could with the driver cutting between the potholes and bomb craters left from more than a decade of war.

  “You know we have uranium here,” Faud said to his driver.

  “Uranium?”

  “Yes, what is needed for power plants and energy.”

  “Don’t go too fast or we will lose the banner.” Faud was holding on to a flag with the Red Crescent, marking the truck as being an ambulance. It didn’t matter that the banner was a lie. He knew that it would cause anything in the sky above to hesitate before shooting at them.

  “Yes, brother.” The driver was stupid but loyal. He had been with Faud since the beginning.

  “I have not been home now for more than ten years.” Faud was from Saudi Arabia. “I was actually born in Mecca. My mother was on the hajj when she delivered.

  “It was the year of the plague.” Faud held out his hand in the wind as the truck turned again and then hit a rut that caused it to fly up into the air.

  It was the year that another form of meningitis had swept through the camps of the visitors to Mecca. Thousands became ill and thousands died. Somehow he was spared. It was meant to be.

  They passed through an arch that had been partially blown away. It was on the edge of another small village through which the highway passed. Children with bare feet ran along the side of the truck. It gave them something to do.

  Faud lifted his Kalashnikov more to change positions then anything, but when he did, the children stopped and ran away. They knew that curiosity could be overcome by fear and death.

  “What is that up ahead?” the driver asked.

  On the other end of the village there were three trucks parked across the road. The bed of each of the trucks was packed with armed men. One truck had a large antiaircraft gun mounted in its bed. It was an odd sight, as the truck was too small for the weapon. When it fired the frame would shake and the gunner would hold on for dear life. It could not fire on the move. Faud had seen many of these outfitted trucks as they were, oftentimes, the only thing that could take on the Russian gunships the Kenyans used.

  “They must want their toll.” Faud had seen plenty of renegades on the roads. They would hold up a passing vehicle for blackmail even if it were a truck loaded with fighters heading to the front. It often amounted to nothing, as the thieves would see that they were outgunned by the trucks they were stopping and would have the good sense to let them pass.

  “I will tell them who we are.”

  They would look at the sign of the Red Cross and think that they had someone who would pay. The thieves would be wrong.

  The truck came to a stop. The men had their guns trained on the vehicle.

  “Al-salamu alaykum!” Faud opened the door and waved the greeting at the center truck. He didn’t hear a reply.

  Two men came from around the center truck and ran up to him. They grabbed him before he could rais
e his weapon. The others with Faud looked on in shock. Another, younger man came from behind the first truck with his pistol raised.

  “Brother, what is this?”

  The lieutenant continued to point the weapon at Faud’s chest. He didn’t say anything.

  An older man came from behind the truck as well.

  “Godane!” Faud said his name without thinking.

  It was Sheikh Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr himself—leader of Al Shabaab and a member of the Isaaq clan.

  “Faud, you knew that the fleet was near?”

  “Yes, but we have not . . .”

  “Be quiet.” Godane held up his finger to his lips. “You moved the missile without telling me.”

  “It was for its protection.” Faud was becoming defiant.

  “And you protect this Amriiki who speaks poorly of me.” Godane was furious.

  Tarriq’s reports had made it back to Godane.

  “Take him away.” Godane looked away as if Faud was no longer standing there.

  Faud struggled as they pulled him to the side of the road. His rifle fell before he could reach for it. They turned him towards the trucks and he saw the men crowd forward to see what was happening. They didn’t bother to tie his hands as they forced him to his knees.

  The lieutenant came up. Faud felt the barrel of the Hungarian pistol press against the side of his forehead.

  “I am to be a martyr,” Faud said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  “What’s going on?” Moncrief had just returned from his tent where he had reclaimed a set of utilities. The combat uniform was of a United States Marine. He had an M416, a vest loaded with magazines and a MARSOC . 45 in his shoulder holster. His question was directed towards Buckley Warren, who was standing at the edge of the compound with a satellite phone next to his ear.

  Warren turned away as if Moncrief wasn’t standing there.

  “What is your name?” Moncrief put a finger on Warren’s chest.

  Moncrief had figured out that Warren knew that Parker and Tola were nearly on top of the target. It would be a Tomahawk dispatched from the DDG-1000 that would follow the signal to the kill point. The explosive would be set for an aerial burst that would chew up every living thing within a hundred meters.